society, it will
be righted more or less; and if no righting is done at all, perhaps the
Press will incidentally toss a leaf of laurel on a name or two: thus in
the exercise of grumbling doing good.

With few exceptions, Nevil Beauchamp's heroes received the motto instead
of the sweetmeat. England expected them to do their duty; they did
it, and she was not dissatisfied, nor should they be. Beauchamp, at a
distance from the scene, chafed with customary vehemence, concerning the
unjust measure dealt to his favourites: Captain Hardist, of the Diomed,
twenty years a captain, still a captain! Young Michell denied the cross!
Colonel Evans Cuff, on the heights from first to last, and not advanced
a step! But Prancer, and Plunger, and Lammakin were thoroughly well
taken care of, this critic of the war wrote savagely, reviving an echo
of a queer small circumstance occurring in the midst of the high dolour
and anxiety of the whole nation, and which a politic country preferred
to forget, as we will do, for it was but an instance of strong family
feeling in high quarters; and is not the unity of the country founded
on the integrity of the family sentiment? Is it not certain, which the
master tells us, that a line is but a continuation of a number of dots?
Nevil Beauchamp was for insisting that great Government officers had
paid more attention to a dot or two than to the line. He appeared to be
at war with his country after the peace. So far he had a lively ally in
his uncle Everard; but these remarks of his were a portion of a letter,
whose chief burden was the request that Everard Romfrey would back him
in proposing for the hand of a young French lady, she being, Beauchamp
smoothly acknowledged, engaged to a wealthy French marquis, under the
approbation of her family. Could mortal folly outstrip a petition of
that sort? And apparently, according to the wording and emphasis of the
letter, it was the mature age of the marquis which made Mr. Beauchamp so
particularly desirous to stop the projected marriage and take the girl
himself. He appealed to his uncle on the subject in a 'really--really'
remonstrative tone, quite overwhelming to read. 'It ought not to be
permitted: by all the laws of chivalry, I should write to the girl's
father to interdict it: I really am particeps criminis in a sin
against nature if I don't!' Mr. Romfrey interjected in burlesque of
his ridiculous nephew, with collapsing laughter. But he expressed an
indigna